Article on security falls short

It is a shame that on the same day Ball State hosted Raisuddin Bhuiyan, a devout Muslim and the “True American” in Anand Giridharadas’s gripping account of murder and mercy in Texas (this year’s Freshman Reader), The Star Press would publish as its lead editorial a fear-stoking polemic by James Robbins diametrically opposed to the message Giridharadas and Bhuiyan brought to Muncie. In fact, Robbins’s opinion piece is little more than talking points from the Donald Trump campaign, points that simply don’t stand up to close scrutiny. I offer two examples.

First, Robbins cites several terror attempts in the U.S. over the past year and claims these events prove President Obama has “failed to secure our borders.” A problem for the Trump/Robbins argument is that in all these cases the security of our borders was irrelevant: the Chattanooga shooter and the New Jersey bomber were U.S. citizens with every right to be in this country, while the Orlando and San Bernardino shooters were born in the U.S. and had lived here from birth. How do we “secure our borders” against U.S. citizens who are already here and may have spent their entire lives here?

In such cases we have no choice but to remain vigilant and act quickly in response to any threat, which is exactly what happened last week in New Jersey. We can’t completely eliminate the risk of such “lone wolf” attacks any more than we can completely eliminate the risk of new school shootings or workplace violence committed within our borders.

Second, Robbins expresses trepidation over what he believes to be “successes” of the Islamic State (ISIL), and implies that the U.S. response is not effective. In fact, the U.S. has spearheaded relentless bombings of ISIL which, accompanied by ground attacks from our allies in Iraq and Syria, have pushed ISIL into retreat across its territory and left it with little time or resources to spread its influence. To survive aggressive U.S. attacks and rally support in that region of the world, ISIL desperately needs to point to evidence that the west wants to engage ISIL in a violent, climactic showdown. Trump’s bombastic rhetoric to this effect gives ISIL just the lifeline it needs to recruit new supporters to its side and remain viable against the many enemies it faces.

In contrast, Obama and Clinton see ISIL as an adversary we confront in alliance with the rest of the world, including as many of the world’s 1.7 billion Muslims as we can convince to join us. It truly is a battle of narratives — ISIL’s wish for a violent showdown of “equals” vs. the U.S. and the rest of the world working to squeeze ISIL completely out of existence. In this context Robbins’s insistence on using the words “radical Islamic terrorists” directly undermines collaboration by needlessly inflaming peaceful Muslim communities against us. The overwhelming majority of Muslims are not terrorists and this huge population can be enormously helpful in the fight against ISIL if we don’t alienate them first. Using Robbins’s logic we might as well start calling members of the Ku Klux Klan “Christian terrorists,” or members of the old Irish Republican Army “Catholic terrorists.” We should call our adversaries terrorists, period. There’s no need to refer to the faith tradition some of them come from.

Toward the end of the Sept. 20 “Meet the Author” event in Emens Auditorium, Anand Giridharadas gave a moving response to the question “What is a True American?” and described how today’s America is more and more the chosen home of the entire world’s most talented and remarkable people. The contrast between this view of America and the dark, threatening view The Star Press chose for its guest editorial last week could not be more stark. In this critical election year I hope The Star Press will remain open to publishing more than one party’s side of the national security policy debate.

David Perkins is a professor of psychological science at Ball State University.

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